What has changed, and why?

 

Mostly throughout our lives we all have dreams which don't seem to come real for us. I dreamed of careers, I dreamed of real men, I dreamed of a healthy lifetime. I lost each of those. Too many other people seem to have lost everything or, simply, changed their lives after Covid hit us in 2019. Losing a cheap rental which you lived in for years as the rental price increase far too much; losing your job at the beginning of Covid during the lockdown; never making your bucket list holidays overseas because during Covid all aircraft were stopped from flying or now the prices are far too high. 

My losses were different to those who gave in to Covid, but they seemed similar: I lost my job when I told my employer about my brain aneuryms; after the stroke I was moved closer to my daughter so the rental costs changed; my holidays overseas simply didn't happen because I had lost 2/3 of my annual salary and I was now on DSP. My bucket list seemed to lose much of what I had ever put on it.

I am living now in a senior residential village and I haven't built up my bucket list. My predominant events were graduating from Griffith University with a BA a couple of years ago, and from Macquarie University this year with a Masters of Creative Writing. Both of these degrees were intended to help me recover from the stroke and aphasia (dysphasia) which I haven't, really. I forget words, I forget to discuss when all I can do is write.

When I passed the Masters of Creative Writing I had just finished the three years of research and writing for my family history book, but I still haven't gotten it printed. I found out that I could choose to only have one printed and use that to advertise it. Perhaps that is what I will do but I really need to understand the cost on that, because I sure can't afford to pay for a whole heap of them printed. It should have helped me to feel "recovered", yet I know I'm not. Some people think I certainly am, but perhaps they don't really know me. 

Two things wound me up today. The first was finishing the Jodi Picoult novel Wish You Were Here, published 2021. I found this in the free library in my retirement village, and it was a very good book: perhaps I could have written a review, but my words probably wouldn't help it. I felt so similar to the woman she had written about during Covid. I remembered a dream I had when I was a child, flying away, and I have often remembered that. Why do I? I had no reason to fly away in my childhood, but maybe that was a sensor warning about my teenager future, away from my family. The character's career in Picoult's novel has changed: so has mine. I might read that novel again in the future. Maybe it might help me.

The second thing was an article on First Peoples nation which says that Jacinta Price's "denialism takes the Coalition to a new Indigenous Affairs policy: erasure of First Peoples". I wonder if she even realises what she is doing? That is so wrong. The First People were in this country long before the British turned up and took over. Maybe she thinks that what happened was okay? Has she ever read history??

I am asking everyone to #VoteYES !